Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Walt Disney. A Burl Ives TV musical. Italian animator Giuliano Cenci. Steve Barron, with 90’s heartthrob Jonathan Taylor Thomas. A Kevin S. Tenney slasher film. Steven Spielberg, somewhat. Roberto Benigni. [...]
Is That Black Enough for You?!?
The history of Black Cinema and Black people in cinema in the United States has been the focus of articles, books, and has been touched on in other films (memorably [...]
On the Line
At first glance, radio doesn’t seem to be the most dynamic world to base a film in. It’s a world of stationary voices, with images filled in by the listener’s [...]
My Best Friend’s Exorcism
Exorcism stories are nothing new in horror. Neither are 1980s period pieces. But sometimes even well-trod ground can be combined to create something special. Such was the case in 2016 [...]
Smile
Gore. The gross-out. Jump scares. There are many tricks and strategies that can go into the making of a horror movie. All of these can be successful if done well, [...]
The Woman King
The historical battle epic is a Hollywood staple. So too is the manipulation of historical stories or the softening of edges to make a story more palatable or reassuring to [...]
Burial
World War II is some of the most heavily trodden ground in cinema history. And it can still be fertile ground for storytelling, as the relatively recent Their Finest and [...]
Orphan: First Kill
Rhoda the Bad Seed, Damien, Regan, The Grady Twins, The Children of the Corn and a multitude of others. Creepy children are a long-standing tradition of horror cinema. When Orphan [...]
Rogue Agent
People, on the whole, can be gullible – they want to believe a good story. Particularly if there is something exciting in it which gives them a chance to transcend [...]
A Love Song
The vast open spaces of the American West have been used to great effect throughout the history of cinema. Across decades and across genres, these landscapes have been used to [...]